


feuillemort

by homesickdreamer



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Depression, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, One Shot, References to Depression, Shiro is Keith's brother, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 14:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15608424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickdreamer/pseuds/homesickdreamer
Summary: Everything feels emptyLance's life is a lie created by himselfHe doesn't want anybody's helpHowever someone tries to save him from drowning in the river formed by his liesmaybe they survivebut maybe they both end up drowning in the endless waves





	feuillemort

Empty.

The whole world is empty.

Lance lays emotionless on his bed, tired of trying to make everyone around him happy, even though himself wasn't truly happy. At all.

Actually, he couldn't feel anything. He felt the emptiness growing inside of him and he couldn't care less about it. He didn't have a reason for it, after all, others always came first. The only thing that mattered was making people like him. Making people satisfied with with ' _he_ ' was, even if himself wasn't included.

Such a selfish thing to do. But yes, he was selfish. Always wanted things so he would come out of it on the bright side, however he made these things look so normal that people thought that he was just determined.

Lies after lies poured out of him, destroying both him and his surroundings slowly. It was almost like his whole existence was a lie, using petty little lies as a wall to protect himself from the truth.

"I'm okay, really" he would say without batting an eye, his fake smile convincing enough, and if not he would just throw in some cheesy puns or whatever that would save the situation. All his friends fell for his never ending stream of lies. Hunk would continue talking about some new recipes he's found online, Pidge would start explaining some stupid computer program that she was always blabbing about.  
Even Keith fell for his lies, at the very beginning Lance was most worried about the jet black haired male’s reaction to one of his 'convincing statements'. But instead of questioning the Cuban boy, Keith just accepted the answer and sometimes face palming over hearing the horrible pun that Lance had told him afterwards.

Yes he was constantly lying to his friends, and he knows that he should feel awful about it, but in all honesty he didn’t give a shit about anything.

Lance had no idea why he was being this careless. He didn’t even want to do anything, just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling which still had some glow in the dark star stickers, from when he was a child. It used to make him smile a bit whenever he looked up at them, but now he’s lost the warm feeling in his chest whenever he thought about happy memories.

Deep inside he knew that what he’s doing isn’t good for him or his family and friends. Since he also told false statements to his family about his mental condition. He thought it would just be a burden to them. He found it strange how he still wanted to ‘protect’ his loved ones, while lying straight into their faces and not really feeling emotions anymore.

Strange indeed. But not strange enough for Lance to care.

“This is stupid.” he murmured under his breath while counting the little stars above him for the hundredth time that night. That was when he noticed that it was already getting dark, moreover his room was already tinted in darkness, a peak of light shining through the little space between his door and the wall.

Soon he heard his mother’s voice calling for Lance and his younger siblings. Since there were no longer any older ones in the house, because moved out a long time ago with their new families.

Lance struggled getting out of his comfortable position but at the end finally made it downstairs, seeing that his grandma and sister were already sitting at the table he painted a smile on his face and went on with his daily routine, pretending that everything was fine.

He realized that he’s been staring into nothingness for who knows how long while warm water was streaming down his body. He must have been in the shower for long, since he heard someone gently knock on the bathroom door.  
“Lance..” he heard his mother’s mellow voice “is everything alright?”. The boy quickly turned off the running water and answered, loud enough so his mother could hear, but not too loud that it would wake anyone up.  
“Yes mamá, everything’s fine! I just uh- dazed off a bit” he wasn’t completely lying about that.  
“Okay then, I have an early shift tomorrow so goodnight for now!” Lance heard his mother’s voice fade as she left, he muttered a “Goodnight mamá”.

Lance flopped down on his bed, even though he was only wearing a boxer and an oversized t-shirt he still felt hot, since the summer was by the corner the heat kept raising day by day, traces of heatwaves staying for the night.

Lance finally closed his eyes and soon he fell asleep.

##### °

##### °

##### °

The next day went by routine: make breakfast, quickly throw basic stationery in his bag and made his way towards his uni lecture around 9.

On the way Lance got himself an iced americano in a nearby coffee shop, where he met Keith, who was waiting for his usual black coffee and so on.

Hunk and Pidge later joined them and the whole day went by, how it usually does. Later that day, while they were sitting at their favorite pizza place, Keith’s foster brother, Shiro dropped by to say hi. It's been a while since they've seen the tall man, he's usually out of town, working and travelling. Other than that everything went by how it usually does. 

When the waiter brought them their pizza everyone started eating and saying “Who’s idea was to eat hot pizza when it already is blazing outside??” but Pidge just ended that with “It’s the best pizza, so just eat before I down the whole thing”. Lance found that a little funny, that the smallest out of them is threatening to eat their part too.  
But when was the last time that the Cuban boy laughed truthfully? What was the last thing he found funny?  
He just couldn’t seem to remember.

Lance’s phone started violently vibrating in his pocket, the screen said ‘Mamá’. His mother doesn’t tend to worry too much, since she knows that Lance is probably with his friends, so she doesn’t usually call him, unless there’s a good reason.

Lance excuses himself as he walks outside the little corner pizza restaurant.  
“Hey mamá, did something happen?” he asks.  
Turns out his younger brother broke his right arm during ‘playing sports’. It wasn’t too serious, but his mom wanted to inform him about it and asked Lance to buy some bandages in the pharmacy on his way back home.

As he hung up the phone and was about to go back in, he sees that Keith has just come out of the restaurant too.

“Everything alright?” the black haired boy asked with slight concern glistening in his eyes.  
“Yep, Marco accidentally broke his arm today, that’s about it” Lance summarized to his friend and shrugged. He already started walking towards the door when Keith grabbed his wrist firmly yet gently.

“Lance I’ve known you since elementary school, I know that something’s wrong. So please.. talk to me. I don’t want to see my friend suffer” Keith said while looking into Lance’s eyes. 

The latter was taken aback, panic rising in him. _When did Keith notice? Was he that obvious? He’s been doing so great until now, will this ruin everything? How would Keith react when he gets to know the truth?_ All these questions ran through his mind.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m fine Keith.” Lance tried to stay collected. Part of him didn’t care about the whole situation, but the other half was just pure anxiety speaking. “Truly fine.” he added reassuringly, but it seemed like he was just trying to convince himself about it.

Keith studied the other’s face, maybe it would give away something, he still thought that something was wrong. Although he didn’t want to push Lance too much, it looked like there’s a very small chance that he would tell him wghateven was bothering him now.

“Mind letting my hand go?” frowned Lance. Keith hadn’t noticed that he was still holding the Cuban boy’s wrist, since he was so determined to find a trace of anything in the expression of the other. He quickly let him go and watched as Lance went back to ~~his pizza~~ their friends, just to find Hunk and Pidge bickering about who’s going to eat the remaining piece.  
The jet black haired male joined them too, keeping an eye on Lance the whole time.

On the other hand Lance’s anxiety just got worse during this time, he tried to hide it with more awful puns and just generally talking too much and somewhat succeeding. 

Nothing much happened afterwards, at least it wasn’t mentionable.  
They parted ways and thank god Keith had to go somewhere before going home, since him and Lance only lived a few streets apart.  
It would’ve been awfully awkward, and Lance hates when people worry about him. Hate, that's right, that was one of the few feelings that he could still 'feel', but after all he still was empty.

##### °

##### °

##### °

After a few  months passed everything was still the same, except it was the summer holidays, which felt more like _hell_ for Lance than a holiday. The emptiness inside of him started growing rapidly and even effecting his daily life.  
He would catch himself staring but not thinking about anything, even once his sister, Veronica asked if he was paying attention, because he was dozing off while watching a B@rbie movie (okay that might have been because he’s been having some nightmares almost every other night, leaving him tired during the day). He didn't mention it to his mom, she already had too many things on her plate, he didn't want to pressure her more.

Lance sometimes met up with Hunk and Pidge, but since playing pretend drained a lot of his energy he tried to avoid socializing.

One day, he was walking home alone from a meet-up with Hunk, Lance was already exhausted, he even had a nightmare the previous night and of course that was the perfect timing to run into Keith.

“Hey Lance!” Keith's lips jerked up to a soft smile.

“Keith, buddy, what have you been up to lately?” Lance forced a weak smile onto his face. Keith had seen him smile almost all his life, of course he would notice how fake it was, but at the moment the Cuban male couldn’t care less.

“Nothing much really, just helping out Shiro with some delivery, that’s all.” the black haired male replied and tried to hide the worried look on his face, when he immediately noticed how tired Lance was. 

“Okay Lance you look like an overused school mop that the janitor probably hates, you are definitely not fine.” 

If Lance had enough energy he would’ve taken offense against that metaphor, but now he just wanted to tell Keith off, to not worry about him. Before he could say anything the other slightly raised his voice. “I know you hate it, but you gotta talk to me about it because keeping it in is going to make it worse.” Lance let out a small laugh which obviously wasn’t genuine “It couldn’t get nya more worse than it already is, I’ll tell you that” he blurted out without thinking. He started to feel lightheaded and his vision started to play games on him till it all blurred.  _‘Oh god why does it have to be this dramatic’_ was his last thought before passing out completely.

##### °

##### °

##### °

As Lance opened his eyes, he found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. There were no little stars on it and he certainly wasn’t in his room. He could smell sanitiser in the air. He slowly sat up and his guess was confirmed, he was in a infirmary. Great.

Next to his bed were some notes left, he could recognize his siblings’ wonky handwriting. The notes said things like _“Get well soon Lance!”_ or _“You’re the strongest big brother EVER!!!”_ which made his heart clench. Well it’s been a while since he felt that.  
He started moving his legs so he could sit up more comfortably but he felt a weight. Lance had no idea how he hadn't noticed that there was someone sleeping at the end of his bed, leaned over so it would provide their body support. The black mullet gave it right away that it was Keith.

He really shouldn’t have called the ambulance, this is too much trouble. He bet they were going to ask him about everything, which he didn’t want to talk about, especially not with strangers.

Keith must have felt the movement, because he lifted his head and looked at Lance. The relief on his face was painfully visible.  
"Thank god you’re awake” his voice sounded a little raspy, but gentle.

“How long have I been out?” Lance asked straightforwardly. He could see a part of a huge window, the light coming through was faint and barely visible. It must have been near dawn.

“For about 13 hours..” that was way better than he expected. “..Lance-” 

“Keith, please” he looked the other in the eye as he cut him off. “Could you stop worrying for like 5 minutes, it’s starting to get very annoying”  
"Maybe if you weren’t laying in a fucking hospital I wouldn’t be so concerned!” Keith snapped.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but no one asked you to wait for me!” Lance’s statement was filled with sarcasm and as most of the time, he couldn't bring himself to actually giv a shit about how the other felt.  
“I can’t believe that you can’t understand that I care about you, you idiot!”  
“In that case, no thank you, it’s too much trouble for both of us” Lance’s reply left Keith speechless. Even though Lance barely felt any emotions, he could still read them. He saw the confusion and hurt in the other’s eyes. The sight made his heart ache hardly enough that he realized what he just said.

“I’m sorry Keith, it’s just.. Maybe it really is better if we stay away from each other.” he looked everywhere just to avoid eye contact. The black haired male reached out and placed his own hands on top of Lance’s, who was taken aback by the sudden contact, he let out a gasp that broke the painful silence.

“Look, I don’t exactly know what’s going on, but I’ve overheard a nurse talking to your mom that there might have been signs of depression..” Keith started “I know that I don’t get any of what you’re going through right now, but I want you to know that we’re here for you. I am here for you. So don’t let feelings bottle up, because it just makes things worse, and that’s the opposite of what we want.. We need you Lance” there was a hesitant pause "..I need you".

During the speech the Cuban boy studied the other’s face, how he’s searching for words, how he’s trying to make it sound comfortable enough for Lance. Few minutes pass until the answer is finally said out loud.  
“You know I would love to change Keith but I just can’t, I’m tired of this. Existing every day, pretending that I want to live, pretending that I’m alive, but really I just want to be consumed by nothingness so all this pain would go away. At this point I can’t even seem to care about others no matter how hard I want to. I’m fucking tired of everything, I just want to end it all.”

He can hear the other’s breath shaking, the grip tightening around his hand.  
“Lance it doesn’t have to end that way”

“I’m sorry” Lance said, now looking at Keith, whose eyes looked terrified as if he just saw a ghost or something. Small drops of tears forming and racing down his cheek, causing some strands of the black hair to stick onto his pale skin.  
Keith's shoulders started shaking, he let out a whine and broke down.

  
With his hand still clinging onto Lance’s who stared at his best friend blankly the last bits of softness disappearing from his eyes, tinting them to the color of a dying leaf.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I highly appreciate it :)
> 
> This is my first fic so I'm extremely nervous about publishing it  
> (also English isn't my first language, so please excuse any typos hahah)
> 
> the meaning behind feuillemort is: the color of a dying/faded leaf


End file.
